Stop Kangaroo Cruelty in NSW!

This petition was started in 2019 to appeal to the NSW Government and Opposition and is now appealing to the NSW Environment Minister Matt Kean and the Premier Gladys Berejiklian to stop the practice of widespread, unmonitored shooting of kangaroos to please farmers. This is continuing despite the bush fires that have killed hundreds of millions of NSW's native animals, with remaining populations uncertain.

'We hear them calling for their dead mothers until the sun comes up'. Eyewitness neighbouring property

In June 2018, the NSW Liberal/National government ‘relaxed red tape’ with regards to the already under-regulated and inhumane system of culling kangaroos.

This unethical measure paved the way for an increased number of inexperienced shooters to kill kangaroos. As a result, kangaroos are being maimed, killed inhumanely and joeys at foot left to starve to death at numbers that are totally unacceptable to the Australian community.

Already, hundreds of thousands of kangaroos are suffering unethical body-shots in the commercial industry. With these relaxed conditions, a major increase in the inhumane treatment of vulnerable kangaroos is certain.

'The wounded kangaroo often has to wait for the shooter to shoot at other individuals until they come back to finish them off. We have heard them vocalise as the shooter approaches to deliver a final blow to the head.

Joeys are often not killed with their mothers but ripped from her pouch and discarded into the bushes, not even counted as a statistical ‘kill’. We hear them calling for their dead mothers until the sun comes up. We see them in the mornings lost and bewildered. We may see them again the next evening, but usually never again after that. This is considered ‘acceptable collateral damage’.

Joeys are often left lying amongst the remains of what was their mother, still smelling like their mother, until they die of exposure or predation. The scene is macabre.

The group social structure is ruined. The mob is in disarray. The fields smell of death.'Eyewitness account of a landowner in rural NSW

‘The RSPCA's research shows commercial shooters have lifted their accuracy rates from 86 to 96 percent.

The four percent variable still equates to 100,000 kangaroos. Farmers and sporting shooters, it says, have shown no improvement in their accuracy rates’ Kellie Russell, Landline 2002

‘What happens when those does [kangaroo mothers] are shot before the shooter can get to the joey is that those joeys have scarpered off, the reality is that those joeys will die from starvation and if not from predation and that in a humane society can't be tolerated.’Dr. Hugh Wirth RSPCA, Landline 2002

'The problem with shooting and culling kangaroos is that when these animals are shot they often aren't killed and it is extraordinarily inhumane. If we were processing domestic livestock the same way we do kangaroos it would shut down immediately. People would be just horrified. I think we need to have that same empathy and understanding for kangaroos as we would a cow. Terri Irwin ‘Kangaroo’ the movie 2017